


this journey's over, another's just begun

by eynn



Series: had a dream, you and me in the war of the end times [7]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Nobody Dies, Time Travel Fix-It, and mace is just Tired, kind of, the council continues to be horrified about the treatment of the clones, yoda views anakin as the force canary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:33:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27072052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eynn/pseuds/eynn
Summary: He knows things, now. He’s always known them but could not remember them. But now that the chip is gone, he can make sense of the instinctual knowledge that it had apparently both given and repressed.Coruscant is noisy, space is cold, it always rains on Kamino, Sheev Palpatine leads both the Republic and the Separatists and will not hesitate to decommission anyone who gets in his way.~Mace is ready when Depa stops her quiet questioning of her Commander and cups her hand over his ear again, clearly signaling that if anyone wanted to bother him further they would quite literally have to go through her.“All right!” he says, with forced cheerfulness, unconsciously mimicking her. “I have a plan.”All eyes turn to him.
Relationships: Depa Billaba & CC-10/994 | Grey, the entire jedi council being a cohesive unit for once
Series: had a dream, you and me in the war of the end times [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1713040
Comments: 44
Kudos: 831





	this journey's over, another's just begun

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: apparently i have been working on this since the first week of july. that was like a month ago, right? hahahaha

He’s in the Council room.

He’s in a chair.

Someone brought in a chair for him. It’s even reasonably comfortable. It has a back and arms and cushions. It’s right beside General Billaba’s.

She is leaning forward in her own chair, speaking earnestly and gesturing as she talks.

Grey doesn’t move, but he flicks his eyes around the room. The entire Council is meeting, apart from General Kenobi. About half of them are there physically, the rest are holos.

He doesn’t know why he’s there. He doesn’t even remember how he got here.

“The entire army has deserted?”

Someone is talking that isn’t his General.

“So are they following Skywalker and Kenobi or what?”

“From the transmissions we found, it looks like the idea started here, without any outside contact?”

“No!” he says. “We’re going to come back, we just needed to stop the security threat first.”

A startled hush falls over the room.

“Grey?”

Why is his General looking at him with such . . . softness in her eyes?

He digs his fingers into the arms of the chair and looks at the floor.

“We’re always going to come back. We were made for you. We’ve been taught our entire lives that we are for you, in life and in death. We didn’t know exactly who we would be assigned to but we know that we belong to you. We have to obey any command you give. You are our priority. Even more than the war.”

Her arm is around his shoulders again. She looks upset.

Grey risks another glance around the room. General Ti has her hand over her mouth and the colors on her montrals look strangely washed-out. General Windu, just on his other side, has his hand hovering as though he wants to put it on his shoulder.

General Koon is gripping the arms of his own chair so tightly that the metal is bending. General Unduli has her head bowed and one hand on her forehead; General Kolar has got up from his chair entirely and is pacing around and around the room, fists clenched.

General Yoda is watching him, ears flat.

Grey tentatively pushes himself a little closer to his General, a little further into her arm around his shoulders. General Kolar can’t attack him while he’s so close to her, can he?

“Sit down, Agen,” General Billaba snaps. Grey can feel something in the air around her, hot and raging like invisible flames, but they’re not painful to him, though he knows they could be. “You’re scaring him.”

General Kolar sits down, but not in his chair. He just plops down on the floor and inhales deeply.

Grey watches him warily. He’s not sure how it’s possible to breathe angrily, but General Kolar is managing to.

“Skywalker was kriffing right,” General Windu says, but the hand that has gently landed on Grey’s knee is not harsh. “How the fuck did we end up willingly taking charge of a slave army? It goes against every single value we have ever had.”

“We’re not slaves,” Grey whispers. Once again, that scary hush falls over the room.

“But Grey, you just said that you can’t disobey anything we tell you,” General Billaba says.

“Have to be people to be slaves,” he says, the words falling out despite his better judgement. “Droids aren’t slaves. We’re just a different kind.”

The yelling that greets that statement makes him abandon trying to be stealthy about it and almost jump into his General’s arms, pressing himself against the side of her chair and ducking his head. She puts both arms around him, and, huh. She presses his head into her shoulder and covers his other ear with her hand. That dulls the shouting somewhat.

General Windu’s hand is still on – no, it isn’t. He apparently grabbed it when the noise started and the General is still holding it, apparently having forgotten him as he runs a thumb back and forth over his wrist and does some yelling of his own. Grey tries to tug his hand away, but the General doesn’t let go.

He doesn’t know why he feels broken inside, the pieces shifting and clashing and painful. He does know that he doesn’t like it at all.

His head aches, a steady dull thrum just above his ear.

Eventually the noise dies down, and the General slowly moves her hand off his ear. She keeps it close, though, fingers curling into the hair just behind it. It’s not painful, though, it doesn’t feel like a restraint. It’s just – there.

Grey feels like he has just been through a battle. He’s still shaking deep inside and he’s too hot but his undersuit is soaked with sweat and feels cold against his skin. He’s in no state to be presentable to the entire Jedi Council.

He stares fixedly at the wall behind his General’s chair and waits for orders.

“Did the Kaminoans teach you that?” she asks softly. The room is too quiet now.

He can only stare. He doesn’t know what she means. They taught them many things.

“Did they teach you that you were droids?” she asks again.

Grey stops to think. The Kaminoans had never really said anything about that at all. They just taught them how to fix themselves and their brothers if they broke, and how much nutrition and rest was essential to stay fully ready for battle. It had been . . . clinical, but everything about the Kaminoans was. They had referred to themselves in the same way.

“No,” he answers honestly.

“Then where – how –” His General stops, breathes in and out, and he can feel her heart beating fast, the pulse in her throat. “Did we teach you that you were not people?”

“No.”

“Then who did?”

“The orders.”

“The orders from the chips?”

“Yes.”

His General shivers suddenly, all over. “All right,” she says, more to herself. “All right. Do you have any idea who gave those orders?”

“The Supreme High Commander.”

“Can you tell me his name?”

“Sheev Brian Palpatine,” he recites obediently. “Age sixty-two. Birth world, Naboo. Designation, Supreme High Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, Emperor of the Confederacy of Independent Systems.”

“The Chancellor wrote the orders on your chips.”

“Yes.” He knows things, now. He’s always known them but could not remember them. But now that the chip is gone, he can make sense of the instinctual knowledge that it had apparently both given and repressed.

Coruscant is noisy, space is cold, it always rains on Kamino, Sheev Palpatine leads both the Republic and the Separatists and will not hesitate to decommission anyone who gets in his way.

Another bit of knowledge pops to the surface of his mind. “We were not made for any particular side,” he says, still staring at the wall. “There are droid factories hidden on Republic worlds that are identical to the Separatists ones. He let the Kaminoans and Geonosians settle between them which side to join and the Kaminoans chose the Republic because it’s easier to bribe. Then he signed a contract with the Geonosians to start making battle droids.”

A feather-light touch hovers over the bandage above his ear. “Are the orders still –?” His General’s voice trails off.

“I can access them now. They were buried before. There is no compulsion to obey them. They just are.”

“Does it hurt?”

How is he supposed to answer that. Of course it hurts. He doesn’t like thinking about killing his General. Or maybe she means the headache that trying to dig up the specifics of the orders is giving him. He settles for making his face carefully blank and keeping on staring at the wall.

The wall is being a good friend.

“Oh, Grey,” she says, and then she is holding him tighter; a hug? “Don’t think about it, you don’t have to tell us more right now. We know enough. It’s all right now.”

~

Mace is ready when Depa stops her quiet questioning of her Commander and cups her hand over his ear again, clearly signaling that if anyone wanted to bother him further they would quite literally have to go through her.

“All right!” he says, with forced cheerfulness, unconsciously mimicking her. “I have a plan.”

All eyes turn to him. 

“Since Palpatine has apparently shared some extremely sensitive information with a few million soldiers, I don’t think we need to worry too much about destroying vital information when we take him down. I propose we evacuate and strip the Temple, set the self-destruct, go kill Palpatine, and then get the hell out of here and as far away from this giant flaming mess of a failing Republic as soon as possible.”

“What about the Separatists?” Luminara asks.

“We should stay away from them too.”

“But what about –”

He cuts her off. “Listen to the Force. Open your minds and really listen. What does it feel like? What is it telling you to do?”

He can see the realization ripple through them like wind through a field.

“Get out,” Shaak breathes, static crackling.

“That’s why the Agricorps bases have been moving further and further from the Core,” Luminara says. “And doing remarkably well, I might add. In fact, I don’t think – are there any other of our bases actually in the Core but us?”

“The last, we are,” Yoda says, eyes closed and head down. “Lulled into submission by this darkness, we have been. Frightened of leaving the perceived safety of these walls.”

There is an uncomfortable silence.

“And if you believe in the whole Chosen One thing, he’s getting out too,” Agen says, trying for ‘encouraging’ but falling somewhere around ‘desperate’.

Yoda hums noncommittally. “Strongly bound to the Force, he is. Hear it more clearly he may. Instinctual, his actions are.”

Mace nods. “Are we agreed? It won’t take that long to move everything out if we use the emergency portals, and they’re so heavily shielded that it shouldn’t alert Palpatine. The clones have taken most of the star destroyers, but there are a few left, so we should take those as well, and we can try to meet up with them somewhere later.”

“Where should we evacuate to?” Plo asks.

“Tell us, the Temple will,” Yoda says gently. “Open randomly the portals do not. Where they open, we shall go.”

**Author's Note:**

> i don't remember which author or which fic had 'brian' as palpatine's middle name, but i love it, so i'm using it too. whoever you are, i really hope you don't mind!


End file.
